


Aspirations

by Lexie



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexie/pseuds/Lexie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robin finally gets the break she's been waiting for, and she is totally, 100% professional and mature about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aspirations

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://redbrunja.livejournal.com/profile)[**redbrunja**](http://redbrunja.livejournal.com/), who asked for Robin + "success is the best revenge."

Robin is totally, completely, 100% over it by the time that Don has been in Chicago for six months.

Sure, it was hard; yes, she cried on Ted's shoulder and let Lily talk her into a spectacularly ill-advised shopping trip

( _"It'll be relaxing!" Lily assured her._

 _It was not relaxing._ )

and she may or may not have spent the summer moping and a week in September not washing her hair, brushing her teeth, or changing out of the yoga pants that she usually won't even wear to the gym -- but Robin is capital-o capital-i Over It.

Robin Scherbatsky is better than that. She has never given New York its vital 4:30 A.M. news while wearing only a suit coat and a pair of sweat-stained sagging y-fronts. She has never bribed a newsroom with cookies or baby-talked her way through an interview. She is a professional.

On the Tuesday when a correspondent gets clotheslined by a protester 10 minutes before his interview was due to air and Robin slowly takes off her glasses and raises her hand to volunteer to take his place, the first thing that Robin does after her broadcast ( _her broadcast_ ) is burst into the apartment and announce, "I'M A REAL JOURNALIST; SUCK IT, _COME ON GET UP NEW YORK!_ " and then make obscene hand gestures.

She announced it to an empty apartment, so no one knows it's a repeated witticism when she shouts for Metro News 1 and _Come On, Get Up New York!_ to suck it when she's clinking glasses with the gang over the table at MacLaren's that night.

" _I_ ," Robin slurs happily, as they all lower their glasses, "am a _journalist_!" It sounds like: _joooornalist._

"I know you get more Canadian when you're drunk, but seriously, what is _up_ with the accent?" Ted says. "I'm pretty sure a couple of the professors in the anthropology department would _looove_ to study you."

Lily and Marshall laugh, and Lily says, "Nice"; Barney is too busy all-too-obviously coming up with a quip, probably something spectacularly filthy about research specimens.

* * *

"Oh my God!" Robin shrills, staggering against somebody on her right; whoever it is props her up again and they continue down the hallway. "I just had the best idea!"

"I bet you're wrong," Ted says, from her left side.

Robin ignores his boring negativity. "I should call Don!"

"Yes!" Barney approves.

"No," Ted groans.

" _And_ bimbo Becky, _and_ that producer from Metro News 1 who said I was tooooo Canadian for a mass-market newsroom--"

" _Yyyyeees!_ " Barney cheers, nodding both approvingly and obnoxiously. He's totally enabling drama for his own entertainment and Robin doesn't even care right now.

The last time Robin drunkenly called Don and left him obscene, totally threatening messages was three months ago; she can't even remember his phone number anymore.

Oh. That's a problem.

"Ted!" She grabs at Ted's shirt, except she misses and gets his face instead. Ted wrinkles up his nose and tries to swat her hand away, so Robin just grabs his arm. "Ted!" She eyes him blearily; his face is focusing and un-focusing a little bit. "You still have Don's number, right?"

"...Yes," Ted says. "Yes, I do." He leaves her to lean on Barney while he unlocks the apartment door. "And we are going to go _get_ it -- in your room. With a glass of water."

"I'm not gonna _threaten_ him, Schmoseby," Robin informs him, ready to fend off Barney if he tries to grab a handful now that he's her only source of support (surprisingly: he doesn't). "Just tell him that I got a much better job than him and he can _suck it_!"

"SUCK IIIIT!" Barney bellows companionably.

"Dude, you're not even drunk," Ted hisses around Robin.

* * *

In the morning, Robin wakes up alone in the apartment with a throbbing head, a dry mouth, no cell phone, and a deep sense of accomplishment. A note taped to the milk carton in the refrigerator informs her that her phone is in the microwave, and then it gets mildly judge-y from there.

Ted is such a priss.

Robin takes a swig from the milk carton and hauls her cell out of the microwave. As she pours her cereal, she pulls up her e-mail client. She dribbles milk down her T-shirt when she sees that she has 187 Facebook notifications; she hurriedly pulls up the "Robin Scherbatsky -- News in a New York Minute" fan page that she'd made as a misguided PR move back when she was still at Metro News 1.

She stares at the page for several long seconds, but the screen doesn't change. She is, in fact, still looking at a YouTube video that is labeled "Robin Scherbatsky's debut as Worldwide News correspondent," which Robin apparently embedded on her own Facebook fan page wall. Except Robin is 100% sure she didn't do that. Someone either used her laptop, where she's automatically signed in, or randomly hacked her account; she didn't even know her clip was on YouTube.

Who cares where it came from -- she's on YouTube!

Robin is halfway through the clip, beaming -- hangover be damned -- at the sight of herself reporting very seriously on Greece's fiscal crisis and its effect on the European Union, when her phone chimes with an incoming text. It's from Barney, congratulating her on her ability to make half-conscious and sick look hot last night (she rolls her eyes and says dryly, "I dated that" to the empty apartment). She pauses the video and texts back that she can now die satisfied, thanks to her life's goal of being a smokin' drunk having been met.

Barney: _you know you love it, scherbatsky._  
Barney: _aren't you supposed to be at that fancy new job now, anyway?_

Robin has one panicky leg in a pair of trousers, her toothbrush hanging out of her mouth as she hops, before she realizes that it's Saturday morning.

"You're the worst," she tells Barney, with no preamble, when he picks up his phone. He does the evil laugh that he's been practicing for his latest hook-up persona (a supervillain who owns his own island), and she hangs up on him.

Robin glances across the living room at her laptop sitting on the coffee table, and she has a blurry flash of Barney fiddling with it. Her eyebrows furrow for a few seconds -- then lift. She has 187 congratulatory notes to read.

She leaves the public profile alone, but on her own private Facebook page -- the one that primarily exists for Katie to post links to YouTube videos of cats squeezing into shoeboxes and for Ted to repeatedly poke her -- Robin updates her status.

 _SUCK IT!!!_

By the end of the day, two college friends have left confused questions, and Theodore Moseby, Lily Aldrin, and Barney Awesome Stinson have liked the status, with Lily adding in a comment that _Marshall says he likes it too,_ and _is your head still going to explode if your phone rings? I want to call you!!_

Robin smiles over the rim of her coffee cup, quiet and self-satisfied and very, very smug.


End file.
